Boston Globe Goes Belly Up?

Boston Globe’s Future Hangs in the Balance

The Boston Globe, a subsidiary of the Times Co., has been “pimped out for profit” and treated from the get-go as a “cheap whore”, now gasping for its last breath of air.

Local papers including the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer across the country are hitting the skids. Save a tree, gag a local journalist is the 21st Century new media mantra that has spawned a new generation of profits over people inspired, pseudo journalism contained under the big skirt of Blogger and Tooberville.

"From the moment the Times Co. purchased The Globe in 1993, it has treated New England's largest newspaper like a cheap whore," former Globe columnist Eileen McNamara wrote last month in the Herald. "It pimped her out for profit during the booming 1990s and then pillaged her when times got tough. It closed her foreign bureaus and cheapened her coverage of everything from the fine arts to the hard sciences."



People are sick of being lied to by newspapers who have excelled at the dark art of misinformation and no information. They are glorifed PR machines for a few wealthy insiders. The MSM model has proven that it is all too willing to promote and accommodate the lies of the U.S. corporofascist government instead of challenging the neo-frat boy, One World pack of slick weasels. The Globe’s demise comes as no surprise, yet another casualty of its ownership by a cadre of corporate elites whose sole interests are profits rather than serving the public as watchdogs of crony capitalism and government.

Who needs these old school, MSM propaganda outlets and their One Big Money Party, lip-locked journalists when you can go online to privately held, for profit, one-stop, One World prop-shops like the Huffington Post and its feeders to choke down all the recycled renditions of AP and Reuters stories peppered with self-serving commentary by the enterprising diva and a caste of enabling actors and CFR anti-local pro-offshoring corporate executives? HuffPo CEO Betsy Morgan, formerly GM of CBSNews.com is one of several CFR members who are members of The Council on the Future of Media whose charter is to champion

"a new global, independent news and information service whose role is to inform, educate and improve the state of the world."

Hmm. Investigative journalism or propaganda? The Council never explained that. Talk about "self-censorship"...

According to the Boston Newspaper Guild, instead of corporate elites at the top taking a hit, The Times Co. employed “bullying tactics” that put the unions under “fierce pressure” to produce additional savings. Why would the Times Co. put the screws to The Globe?

“Some industry observers have expressed skepticism that Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. would want his legacy to include the shuttering of the Globe, which his company bought in 1993. But the Times Co. itself is under strong financial pressure. It recently mortgaged its new Manhattan headquarters, borrowed $250 million from a Mexican billionaire at 14 percent interest, laid off 100 newsroom staffers and cut salaries by 5 percent.”

McNamara, who now teaches journalism at Brandeis University, ridiculed Pinch Sulzberger as

"the boy genius whose crack management skills have helped drive the parent company of two of journalism's most respected newspapers to the brink of bankruptcy."

Unless that Mexican dude wants to pony up some more dough to prop up The Globe (and with such an attractive 14% usurious rate, I might add) things don’t look so good for workers of the Boston paper. Has anyone else noted a marked reduction in the quality and accuracy of “truthful” news reporting over issues that affect people? Who needs journalists, anyway, when we now have, courtesy the neo-frat boy controlled government -- circus clowns on both the Right (Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, etc.) and the Left (Kos, its spawns, MoveOn, etc.) tripping over each other on their stampede to the trough to fill the void? Both sides desperate to manipulate and “lead” a woeful posse of rubes with, yeah, more lies and gatekeeping…Meet the New Boss, ya know?

So who needs the Globe? When the locals begin to realize that they are being manipulated with the same old lies and gatekeeping, why bother to pay for the privilege? When you can view opinion news shows on cable or satellite, why restrict yourself to just one newspaper or even to a newspaper at all?

Until our local newspapers realize that people are sick and tired of being lied to by journalists promoting propaganda fluff/gatekeeping pieces for greedy corporate and political insiders, newspapers are never going to be able to swim out of the swamp that is swallowing them alive.

Are American journalists (not these pseudo hacks/”big bloggers”) smart enough to demand change or are they just as complicit and cowardly and greedy as their corporate paymasters unwilling to admit their own faults? Don’t answer.

In the meantime, at least for now – there are a few non co-opted blogs out there still speaking truth to power.

-2Truthy